ON February 14, 1992, 23 years ago, Jamaica came within a hair’s breadth of being the centre of a personal and world tragedy that would have become a part of unwanted history.

General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States of America, and veteran of battle lines drawn in Korea, Vietnam, Germany; mastermind of the Desert Storm invasion, and the man who controlled the immense war arsenal of the USA, found himself in free fall in a helicopter over Kingston Harbour.

He was on an official visit to Jamaica, homeland of his parents, with his wife Alma, and they had boarded the Jamaica Defence Force helicopter for a flight to Norman Manley Airport to transfer to an American Blackhawk for deeper trips into the country’s interior.

They were about 1,500 feet above sea level, and Powell was gazing out at the blue sea when he heard a sudden crack.

“I knew instantly we were in trouble,” says Powell in his autobiography. “The aircraft began to sway wildly. We were dropping into the bay. I had already experienced one helicopter crash in Vietnam. I knew that if the heli struck water it would probably flip and the blades would snap off. With the doors open, the aircraft would sink like stone.”

While all this drama was taking place over the Jamaican skies, Saddam Hussein was in the Middle East trying to thwart UN inspectors’ efforts to put him out of the nuclear, biological and chemical business. Desert Storm was now history, and America was trying to reshape its foreign policy.

Elsewhere, Powell had been facing a festering situation at Guantanamo Bay, with Haitian migrants piling up under conditions starting to resemble a concentration camp. And public opinion polls in the USA had raised the possibility of a Bush-Powell ticket for the upcoming US elections.

And here was this four-star general and advisor to three presidents, and former national security advisor, plummeting down towards Jamaican waters, facing possible death miles and miles away from Washington.

“Hunch over! Grab your legs!” he shouted to his wife. “Why?” she asked. “Dammit! Just do it!” he yelled.

From his crouched position Powell saw the two pilots snatching at the controls, racing through emergency procedures. “They shut off the engines,” he wrote, “and the only sound was the whopping of the blades as we continued to drop. At the last moment the pilots managed to nurse the ‘copter over the shoreline for a hard landing scarcely 20 feet from the water’s edge. I unhooked my seat belt, grabbed Alma, and dragged her away”.

After a minute or two, he went over to the pilots and congratulated them on an impressive piece of flying.

It was a nerve-wracking experience, to say the least. There were no ambulances speeding to the landing site. No fire brigades, no army trucks, no rescue teams to protect and rescue America’s favourite military chief. “What flashed through my mind in those aweful moments,” he said, “was that we have three children and their mother and father were about to die”.

This is the inside story with details of what never surfaced beyond the basics in the press. In fact, the world passed over this moment as if it never happened, almost routine. A forgotten piece of Jamaica’s history could easily have turned out to be the most gripping and tragic news story of the year.

Later, Prime Minister Michael Manley telephoned him on hearing the news. “My dear Colin, do you know what is causing the rustling of the trees you hear? It is my immense sigh of relief.” Suddenly, the chief realised the irony of the episode. What had been the land of his father’s birth had nearly become the site of their son’s death.

Now we come to the real point of this story. It has to do with the urbaneness, calmness, courage, and self-effacing behaviour that General Powell has exhibited all through his life and career. Born in Harlem, he was raised in the South Bronx in a neighbourhood of tenement yards, street fights, and gangs, but with a rich family life stocked with Jamaican manners, ambition, discipline, and love. Powell never forgot or tried to hide his roots and social background. And it was no surprise that while in Jamaica he made sure to visit his father’s home in Top Hill, St Elizabeth.

The crash did not deter them. That morning they completed their official tour of American installations and then took off by jeep into south St Elizabeth, where he quickly recognised the familiar St Elizabeth bloodline in the faces of the crowd that came out to greet him. They were given a royal reception at the tiny cottage, shooed the chickens out of the living room, and visited the family plot to pay homage to his grandparents.

They later flew over Westmoreland, birthplace of Alma’s parents, and as they travelled along he wondered what dreams or fears had prompted two young Jamaicans to cut native roots and emigrate to a foreign land. “I wondered if they could have imagined how much this act of courage and hope, coming from basic poverty and a four-cubicle house in Top Hill, would have shaped the destiny of their son.”

Parallels of examples of leaders tracing their background to humble beginnings and being proud of it abound in Jamaica. Bustamante and Norman Manley came from struggling rural stock. P J Patterson travelled from rural Westmoreland into Kingston with a suitcase. Portia Simpson Miller has never forgotten her humble beginnings in St Catherine. Seaga gave up relative wealth to sojourn for a while in tiny Buxton Town and a room on Salt Lane in downtown Kingston. Hugh Shearer, ‘Son Lindo’, grew up in a little village called Martha Brae in Trelawny, and returned often to pay homage to his mother and the elders who ‘grew’ him.

The other side of the coin is those who in their climb up the ladder of success forget where they are coming from and shake the dust off their shoes. These are the type of folk we wrote about in an earlier column, who find it difficult to survive when the time comes for them to step aside from their positions of pomp and vanity.

Many top-ranking people have this difficulty when circumstances dictate that they give up their treasured office. No longer the official car, the chauffeur, no adoring crowds, and what is worse, they now have to join a line to pay their own utility bills. People no longer stand when they enter a room, and their former staff ignore their corny jokes. And when they drive up to the security gate of their former compound, the guard asks, “Mr Who?”

Colin Powell tells the story of how the change in his lifestyle after retirement was driven home one afternoon when he ran out of gas on the highway. “A Good Samaritan rescued me and we risked life and limb pushing the car unto the shoulder. I had on a baseball cap pulled low over my face and no one, including my saviour, recognised the man who could not keep a car gassed up as someone who had once moved armies. Just as I was about to telephone for help and a wrecker, a traffic cop pulled up.

“I pulled the cap down lower and explained what had happened. He delivered the standard never-run-out-of-gas lecture, then went to the open engine. He pulled out a hose, squirted about a half pint of gas into my tank and left without recognising me. I pulled into the traffic, got caught in another traffic jam, and ran out of gas again. I told myself, “Mr Powell, becoming a civilian is going to be harder than you expected.”

I had a similar experience some years ago when I became Private Joe. My car broke down on Mount Rosser road and it took two days in Linstead to get it repaired. On one instance, while travelling into Kingston in a crowded taxi with the radiator on my lap, with disapproving stares from my fellow passengers, it suddenly occurred to me that a month before I could have simply called the office and a wrecker would appear. I laughed at myself all the way into the Kingston parts shop at this new situation in which I had found myself. The experience, the conversation, the witticisms of my new-found friends on the road, and the outrageous driving made an enjoyable change to the office style humdrum.

Perhaps if Colin Powell had got through on his telephone to his former White House office and called for assistance, he too might have heard on the other end, “Colin who?”

Lance Neita is a public relations and community relations consultant. Send comments to lanceneita@hotmail.com.